


i'm not in love

by akumatised (emeraldine)



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Jealous Chloe, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 10:03:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11872038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeraldine/pseuds/akumatised
Summary: Finding out who your soulmate is is always a strange experience. A weird and wonderful epiphany, that always leads to happily ever after.Or so he’s told.His soulmate is the brattiest, most unbearable person he's ever met, who enjoys making people's lives hell. He's been the target of her pettiness on more than one occasion.So you can imagine that when he sees the little turquoise N just below her ear, and matches it up to the little blue C beneath his, he really wants to believe this whole soulmate thing is crap.Unfortunately, the world seems determined to prove him wrong.





	i'm not in love

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Cross the River and Roam the Shore](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9381110) by [speaks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/speaks/pseuds/speaks). 



People have tried forming theories to explain why the letters appear seemingly at random. They don’t come on 16th or 18th or 21st birthdays, they don’t introduce themselves right when one’s soulmate does; they simply arrive out of nowhere. He’s always had a theory that whichever higher power rules the earth (because, really; how could there  _ not  _ be one when people are born with soulmates, whose initials are tattooed onto their skin?) just watches over the world, waiting until each and every individual is “ready” to know who their Person is.

But when his arrives, he doesn’t feel ready.

He doesn’t know who it is immediately; that particular shade of blue is an incredibly common eye colour and there are so many names out there starting with C, but still. It feels like a huge revelation regardless, knowing there’s someone out there in the world that’s meant for him. 

It’s thrilling and terrifying all at once. 

He decides to keep it to himself, believing that he’ll find them when the time comes and that looking for them would merely be a pointless endeavour to speed up the process that’s going to happen eventually anyway. So he breathes a sigh of relief that it’s in a spot that’s often hidden by his hair anyway, and goes on living his life as normal.

Then, roughly a month later, he finds out. And it shocks him to the core.

By some sort of miracle, Adrien gets away with having another birthday party. It’s probably due to the fact that his father is out of the country and his classmates throw a house party in his honour at Nino’s, where paparazzi are not immediately going to look for the now 18 year old supermodel. But that’s besides the point.

The point is that Chloé Bourgeois shows up. This surprises no one; nor does the fact that she’d dressed to the nines. She’s probably expecting this to be the night that she woos Adrien once and for all.

So what surprises Nathanaël is the fact that he can’t take his eyes off her. Not when she steps in with her perfectly curled hair, deep red lips and black fur coat and tight dress ensemble. Not when she’s drunk and dancing and apparently forgetting to put on the airs of contempt she constantly wears around the people that surround her now. Not when Adrien shrugs her off, too distracted to notice the way her face crumples and her eyes fall and her heart seems to break on the dance floor.

Nathanaël's never cared about Chloé Bourgeois.

His only explanation is that the alcohol is making him weird.

He tells himself that as he leaves the room, suddenly needing air. He tells himself that when she shows up on the balcony he’d retreated to only minutes before, with tears in her eyes and an unfocused glare.

“Oh. It’s you”, she slurs, a little of that contempt back. She stumbles over to the only chair on the balcony other than the one he’s sitting in nearby and practically falls into it, complaining about her heels with a vacant gaze, taking off the aforementioned shoes with a lot of care for someone who’s drunk and has just been complaining about them. It almost makes him smile. She’s nothing if not predictable.

Then she looks up at him. “ _ You’d  _ date me, wouldn’t you?”

He frowns immediately, before he can think to control his expression. “Wha-”

She scoffs, cutting him off. “Stupid question”, she says with a roll of her eyes. He honestly doesn’t know what she thinks the answer is. He honestly doesn’t know himself what it is.

“I know everyone hates me, you know”, she says into the silence.

_ Ouch.  _

“I know I’m a bitch. I know people only put up with me because I have the power to ruin them if they don’t, and I know that Adrien only puts up with me because we grew up together.”

Her voice has got that tightness to it that betrays the lump in her throat, and damn, he feels like shit for her. Even though none of it is his fault. “Hey”, he tries to say. “I’m sure that’s not tr-”

“Oh, shut up”, she snaps. “You know as well as I do that it is.” She goes to wipe her nose with her sleeve, remembers the faux fur and grimaces in disgust, before settling for sniffing as hard as she can to get rid of what she can’t wipe away. It’s weird as hell seeing her like this; so human. So small.

“I bet  _ she’s  _ his soulmate”, she mutters, voice laced with venom. His curiosity is piqued.

“Who?” 

He’s pretty sure he knows exactly who she’s talking about, but in all honesty he’s so surprised she’s just saying it; he kind of wants to take the opportunity that’s being offered to him.

“Marinette  _ freaking  _ Dupain-Cheng. It’d be just my luck, wouldn’t it?” she laughs bitterly. “She’s already better than me in every way; why not just win over the one boy who could ever love me too? Never mind that she moons over him like a damn fangirl  _ still _ , after two years of being in his class. It’s pathetic.  _ She’s  _ pathetic.” Then a quiet, half-choked sob escapes her. “I’m pathetic”, she whispers.

“Unreciprocated feelings aren’t pathetic, Chloé”, he replies. That he can say with confidence.

“They are when you’ve got someone else’s initials on your skin”, she says under her breath. 

It kind of hits him then. Like, of course Chloé has a soulmate; everyone does. But it’d never really occurred to him before; the thought that there was someone out there in the world that she was made to love and adore and be loved by in return. He couldn’t help but wonder what kind of person they’d be.

“Wonder who the poor bastard is”, she says then. It seems she’s curious too.

“Hey”, he starts, before thinking that posing this question might be dumb as hell, “have you ever thought about, you know.. being a little kinder to people?” 

_ Yikes. Bad phrasing. _

“Wow, Nath. You really know how to make a girl feel better”, she responds, glaring at him.

“Sorry; that totally came out wrong. I-”

“I don’t think there’s a nice way to say “hey, you’re a piece of shit”, is there?”

“No, no! I mean-ugh. Look. i don’t know who your soulmate is, but whoever they are, they were meant for you. I don’t think the “powers that be” would choose you for them if it wasn’t right. You know? But what I mean by what I said was, you’ve got a lot going for you. You’re strong and beautiful and kind of a badass in your own way. And I bet you could be smart and compassionate and inspiring as hell if you wanted to be. But instead… you hurt people. And I’m sure you have your reasons for putting up firewalls, but.. you’d be kind of incredible if you just let yourself feel, and lowered the spoilt rich girl mask a little. You know?”

_ Where the hell did that come from? _

She’s frowning up at him through her lashes. “Okay, Dr Phil”, she says with a dismissive scoff.

Whatever. He’s tried; that’s good enough for him.

“I’m just saying”, he says with a shrug as he stands up and turns away. He’s almost inside when she calls out to him, voice small.

“Nathanaël?”

He turns. She’s looking up at him, eyes brimming with unshed tears shining in the glow of the moon. “Thank you”, she whispers. 

He finds himself smiling.

Then she throws up.

It’s not even a question for him whether or not he’ll run to the kitchen and grab whatever he can find to help clean her up; it’s happened before he even registers his own movement. When he comes back with a bucket and a wet cloth she’s looking at her feet and the floor in disgust.

She lets him wipe the vomit off her mouth even though it smears her lipstick, and her bare feet even though that’s weirdly intimate for some reason, and the whole time she says nothing. 

“Good thing it missed your shoes, right?” he jokes. When he looks up at her, she’s  _ smiling.  _ Honest to God  _ smiling _ . It’s not a catty or smug grin, just a genuine smile. And she thanks him for the second time in as many minutes, making him smile yet again.

He’s just about to say “anytime”, although he’s not really sure if that would be honest, when something in her stare changes.

“You have such pretty eyes”, she says, speech still lazy. Her gaze carries.. something. Something he can’t identify and something he’s definitely never seen before, towards him or from her. He can feel his cheeks warming at the compliment, which terrifies him just as much as her expression does.

_ What the hell is happening right now? _

Fortunately, he doesn’t have to sit frozen in shock for too long, because right as her eyes are fluttering ( _???? _ ) and her head is inching closer to his ( _???!?!?!?!? _ )- she throws up again, right into the bucket he’d brought for that purpose. 

He tries to breathe again, and his forced laugh comes out strained. 

_ Damn. I’ve heard alcohol can make you stupid, but holy crap. She’d be mortified if she ever found out she almost- frick,  _ **_she almost kissed me, what the hell_ ** _? _

He moves around to behind her to hold her hair back, and that’s when he sees it.

A small, turquoise blue N in that very spot right below and behind the earlobe where the little blue C on his skin also sits. Everything clicks jarringly into place.

They’re soulmates.

_ Holy shit. _

He holds back his gasp, knowing now is  _ not  _ the time to be revealing things like that, and not even knowing if he ever wants to reveal that, and tries to act normal.

He leaves her as soon as he can without making it known that he’s completely and totally shook, and gets himself as far away from that party as he can.

_ My soulmate is Chloé Bourgeois, daughter of Paris’ mayor. _

_ My soulmate is stuck up and rude and selfish and broken as all hell. _

It’s then that the irony of her words hits him.

**_I’m_ ** _ the poor bastard. _

 

///

 

When Chloé Bourgeois wakes up with a pounding headache and bleary eyes, she’s not exactly surprised, even before the memory of Adrien’s party returns to her. But the feeling of total sadness and emptiness that washes over her when she remembers his rejection of her? That’s new.

Adrien has never brushed her aside the way he had last night. Sure, he’s fed her half-aware responses before when distracted, and she’s always known somewhere in the back of her mind that their relationship was more one of tolerance and obligation than actual interest, but she can’t deny that she’s always held out hope for him to one day see her in a romantic light. After all, he’s the only person in her life who can even slightly understand the pressures she’s under, and in the same way, only she can fully understand him and his life. They’re perfect for each other in that way.

At least, that’s how she’s always seen it. He and her soulmark apparently don’t agree. She’s been ignoring that thing for the past month, in denial about the prospect of being with someone other than Adrien. But, of course, reality’s come and hit her in the face now.

Her heart breaks all over again as she recalls the way he’d glanced past her in the middle of their conversation and become so transfixed by  _ Marinette  _ that Chloé herself had been entirely forgotten. She remembers the way he’d gravitated to the one person Chloé has always despised more than anyone else in the world, his expression so disgustingly smitten she’d probably have thrown up even without the alcohol, if she wasn’t a little preoccupied by the feeling of her heart being torn from her chest.

Why does it have to be  _ her _ ?! Of all people, he falls for Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Chloé’s nemesis and the cause of every ounce of social anxiety hidden within her. Where’s the justice in that? And since when is he even noticing her anyway? She doesn’t deserve him. Besides, it’s ridiculous; the way she fawns over him,  _ still _ , after so many years!

Suddenly, Chloé’s words strike a sense of deja vu in her, and she’s reminded of a balcony and a redhead. The details of  _ that  _ part of the night are hazier, which isn’t surprising given the amount of alcohol she’d managed to consume in between Adrien’s dismissal and her conversation with Nathanaël, but she’s pretty sure she ranted to him, and she seems to remember some lame advice from his end. And there’s something else, that’s more a feeling than an actual distinct memory. It’s a feeling she’s never associated with  _ him  _ before.

It’s something like… warmth. Or.. something. It’s nice, whatever it is.

She’s not sure what to make of that.

She’s also not sure whether or not she wants to find out why she’s feeling that way, or what happened on that balcony to cause it.

But when he comes into class the next Monday and averts his eyes with a hint of pink in his cheeks the second he sees her, her mind is made up.

She needs to know what’s going on.

 

///

 

_ I must be literally going insane. That’s what it is. That’s  _ _ all _ _ it is. _

Nathanaël has never once in his life found himself thinking about Chloé Bourgeois for more than two full minutes. And thinking about her in a positive light.. that's not even in the realm of possibility.

Yet, here he is, unable to stop thinking about or looking at her, and his thoughts concerning her are as confusing to him as they would be to anyone else in the world if he were to share them. It’s almost like he…

He can’t even say it.

It’s been three days since The Balcony Incident that changed everything, and it’s been the only thing on his mind in all that time. At first, his only thoughts centered around the question of what he would do if she ever found out they were soulmates, and whether or not one was ‘allowed’ to date someone that wasn’t technically theirs. If he met someone else and fell for them, would it be considered cheating?

He’s never been big on anything to do with studying or researching, but he’s pretty much looked into every clause of this whole soulmate thing over the weekend. And he’s found some pretty broad responses and results to the whole thing, but what shocks him most about it all isn’t what he reads, but how he feels about it.

There are plenty of stories about people falling in love with others, whilst knowing full well that they had another person’s initials inked permanently on their skin, and there are plenty of people of the opinion that this whole soulmate thing is bogus, and people will love whoever they love, regardless of ‘destiny’ or ‘fate’. He expects those results to reassure him, to “give him permission” to subvert the narrative set out for him.

He doesn’t feel reassured.

Because there’s a part of him that, although he’ll  _ never  _ admit it, wants to know what it would be like to be loved- and truly loved, not whatever her admiration for Adrien had manifested into- by Chloé Bourgeois. He’ll label it as mere curiosity to sate his warring mind, but ever since the realisation that someone out there has been chosen to be hers, he’s found himself wondering what being hers would be like.

He knows she’s got some serious demons to work through; that’s no secret. But for all her airs and facades, the sadness and insecurity within her is plain as day to him. She hides it fairly well, but he can see it. He’s always been able to see it. It makes him wonder who else, if anyone, knows what’s hidden behind her selfishness and pride. Is her friendship with Sabrina a shallow thing, like it appears to be, or has she seen her at her most vulnerable?

Did he, on that balcony? Or is there even more to it?

These are the questions that begin to replace the ‘can I ditch my soulmate’ musings, as he struggles to fall asleep under the starry ceiling that usually brings him so much comfort. A part of him begins to worry for her, to sympathise with her, and to wonder what else lies beneath the surface of her heart. 

By the time he sees her next, having psychoanalysed the heck out of her in the comfort of his bed every night that past weekend, he’s pretty much decided that uncovering the mystery is probably more trouble than it’s worth, and that he’d most likely be wasting his time in trying to get to really know her.

Of course, then he has to look her in the eye, knowing what he knows, knowing the hurting, broken person she probably is, knowing she almost kissed him on Friday, knowing she’s his soulmate whether either of them like it or not, and all his resolutions disappear in a puff of smoke. 

Suddenly he can’t even look at her anymore. He can’t un-know what he now knows. And he can’t forget the sight of her, red-lipped, teary-eyed, glamorous and shattered. He can’t let go of her.

He’s so screwed.

**Author's Note:**

> ((okay like.. disclaimer, I don't even know if this is realistic bc I don't know how drunk people behave... but let's go with it yeah?))
> 
> sooooo, this is a thing. tbh, I'm quite happy with it but, as always, had heaps of trouble actually turning it into more than what it was and keeping things going so, for now, it's just a oneshot. if I'd continued it, it probably would've gone somewhere along the lines of:  
> \- nath hardcore in denial  
> \- chloe somewhat aware that something happened but unable to fully remember it and therefore hardcore suspicious of him now that he's acting all weird  
> \- chloe deciding to 1: take his advice and 2: use it against him, in being friendly with him as a ploy to uncover the mystery of what exactly happened at Adrien's party  
> \- said plan totally backfiring in the sense that wow they suddenly really like spending time together what  
> \- cue MUTUAL DENIAL  
> \- sabrina being the all seeing eye and suspecting that they might be soulmates from the start  
> \- chloe disregarding it until she spends more time with him and they become actual friends?ish? and she begins to see how much they have in common and how well they complement each other and she kinda goes "maybe..."  
> \- nath caving to her "interrogations" (which basically arent even a thing anymore bc she's forgotten she even had a specific motive for talking to him) and blurting out one day that she almost kissed him at Adrien's party and then he saw her soulmark  
> \- chloe retaliates & responds badly to feeling called out when she can't confirm any of what he's saying, accuses him of lying; cue unintentional Harsh Words(tm) and both of them hurting each other before going their separate ways  
> \- nath one day deciding that this is something he's gonna have to work for and making efforts to make up with her, the most effective one being letting his soulmark show by tying his hair up at school ad getting the attention of a looooot of people  
> \- chlo happens to see it and feels like The Worst bc she pushed him away because she was stiiiiill in denial, but now that she knows she's hurt a guy that she genuinely can see herself with she's gotta fix it aaaaaand cue the make up scene!!!!! yaaaay!!
> 
> buuuuuuuuuut that never got to that pont. so here's this. sorry?  
> anyway, come find me on tumblr if you want! I'm vvondertrev.tumblr.com.


End file.
